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"you can always fork. If you do not agree with the current developers' direction, fork. "

People tried to fork Freenet a couple of years ago (October 2003) when it started going down the shitter (in April 2003). The forkers tried to be as nice as can be about such an issue, but the current Freenet developers told them in effect to 'Get the fuck out of here' and they did not bother.

What one of the would be forkers (jrandom) did do though which is a nice kind of tasty ironic desert is make I2P instead. Kinda nice, time that would have been spent on Freenet now made an application that in many respects meets or exceeds the abilities of Freenet.

I really do not want to make this sound like a bitter tale, it really isn't. I believe both projects (are?) seem to be getting a long since everyone has the goal of working anonymous p2p. This newest idea of Freenet is looking towards the future when our government (Western governments) try to outlaw anonymous p2p like current dictatorships are or have done.

You can have speed and anonymity with I2P since you can control your the # of hops. Now if you *and* your destination node both choose to have 0 hops then it would be a direct connection. But since no one knows you are choosing to use 0 hops, you have plausible deniability that you are just acting as a buffer and ferrying the data for someone else instead of yourself.

With I2P you can control how much anonymity you want and how much speed, that is why many people are looking at it (on top of the fact you can run BT, IRC, eMail and other internet services over it).

You can have speed and anonymity with I2P since you can control your the # of hops. Now if you *and* your destination node both choose to have 0 hops then it would be a direct connection. But since no one knows you are choosing to use 0 hops, you have plausible deniability that you are just acting as a buffer and ferrying the data for someone else instead of yourself.

With I2P you can control how much anonymity you want and how much speed, that is why many people are looking at it (on top of the fact you can run BT, IRC, eMail and other internet services over it).

I think he means I2P. It's just a layer thing (there's an azureus plugin, but that still leaves you relying on centralised points for your torrents), and it's java, so I prefer gnunet, which works as a more conventional p2p network.

2 related projects, but they're also very different to freenet.

Tor is simply an anonymous p2p proxy:
http://tor.eff.org/

i2p is a fork from freenet. Similar to Tor but you can host your own site off it.

Both are not nearly as freenet. I'm loving i2p though because it's much more practical.

For a lowdown from the i2p people on these and more similar technologies see here:
http://www.i2p.net/how_networkcomparisons

...then use I2P?

http://www.i2p.net/

Better than SSH, as with SSH you need a place to SSH to.

Somebody suggested TOR, and while it is good for surfing somewhat anonymously, there is a better solution called I2P. Though still in beta mode, it provides an amazing level of security that you can use to not only browse the web, but also to host your own website anonymously and also have free anonymous email. I will warn you right now that it is very slow, but if your need for privacy is as necessary as you make it seem than it's perfect for you. Cheers.

i2p is exactly what you are looking for. However it is still in a very very early stage of development.

Once it is done though you will be able to do everything on the internet anonymously, like download television torrents

So to speed things up some of you Java developers should volunteer.

I think these lawsuits will simply speed up the migration away from P2P to anonymous P2P. Many individuals believe strongly in the freedom of uncensorable speech and many also think that copyright (a monopoly on the free flow of information and a an barrier to promote artificial scarcity of knowledge erected by government enforced through threats of violence) needs to be reformed at best and removed totally at worse.

The more promising anonymous p2p applications is I2P, its Wikipedia article here. It is a network layer and has a variety of tools including anonymous bittorrent [ducktorrent], [i2pbt], [azeureus plugin] (Azureus 2.3.0.0 has I2P code in its core as seen from their release notes), anonymous p2p search [i2phex], anonymous IRC [core], anonymous http [core], anonymous distributed content store like Freenet [Quartermaster or 'Q']. All it really needs is people to share their content (just put it in your files in automatic webpage directory) and anonymous newsgroups.

There is also Freenet which is a useful backup to I2P until I2P develops a well working distributed content store (currently Quartermaster or the defunct Stasher fufill these rolls and are in the I2P core CVS). If you get Frost for Freenet there are a few distribution organisations there as well.

Just wait till everyone is using i2p. Then the RIAA can't really do anything about it.

On that note I agree with the assertion this letter raises that the RIAA and similar groups are only intrested in the law when it suits them. When it doesn't they either disregard it or spend tons of money to buy our congressmen so they can have it changed.

True in almost everything but freenet and some obscure ass tool promoted by the EFF.

Frost on Freenet wasn't too bad when I used it once, but it's gotten slower (somehow...).

Tor doesn't allow, nor does it facilitate, P2P traffic through it. You'll not only get banned, but I'm not sure if it's even possible to share files through it (the illegal part).

I2P is the only one that lets you host anonymous servers (for sharing), and has a BT client for it, but it is slow as well. So yeah, BT is pretty much the only solution as of now.

It's not a file sharing network per se, but i2p is an anonymity layer for the 'net which allows, amongst other things, for anonymous bittorrent.

Once again I remind us of

http://tor.eff.org/
http://www.i2p.net/
http://freenet.sourceforge.net/

and also
http://www.cryptophone.de/
GSM can now be decrypted in almost realtime, and the recieving hardware is only a few thousand dollars. Though personally I'd prefer a freeware OSS push to talk GPRS program because not many can make data calls

Go to www.i2p.net
Download
Install
Learn to use
Use Bittorrent safely and anonymously
Problem solved.

You might find the work going on at www.i2p.net rather interesting. They've already got anonymous HTTP, NNTP, FTP, streaming audio, and, yes, bittorrent up and running rather nicely - decent speeds, good anonymity and security (though it's still in beta, the security is already impressive, and getting stronger with each release)

There are also other end-user (working) anonymous-p2p programs such as:

• I2P
• AntsP2P
• Mute (It has an anonymity bug so do research on this one before using it).

The site Anonymous-p2p.org has a good list of anonymous p2p programs as well.

Why not use I2P instead? It's a great anon network and it already has a bittorrent-type client.
The more users start using it the better it will get.

Not sure if I2P has been mentioned in any of the slashdot headlines yet.. most likely in a month or two after the UDP transport has been implemented and most of the bugs ironed out.

I2P is basically the network layer anonymized, apps like apache/jabber/irc/etc work fine over it with sometimes only minor mods (to ensure anonymity is preserved.) And no, it's not freenet replacement as some have thought.. different beasts they are.

I'd plug my own eepsite but that would defeat the purpose of using i2p wouldn't it....

You don't have to believe it. You can go ahead and check it out yourself by getting the simple BigInteger benchmark from i2p at http://dev.i2p.net/javadoc/net/i2p/util/NativeBigI nteger.html

Fair enough, but that is a very specialised use. Almost all scientific apps use the equivalent of C or Java doubles for calculation. Almost no serious high-performance scientific calculation would use arbitrary precision mathematics. The only use I can think of is numerical research.

I don't think it is useful to pick one very specialised case where Kaffe has improved speed and ignore the general case where it seriously lags. Something like Linpack is a better benchmark, which uses fixed precision floating point (although my personal interest is in molecular modelling). Linpack shows Sun's VM to be within 10-20% of C/C++, and Kaffe way behind (around half the speed). This is quite an achievement for an OS JVM, but too slow to be an adequate replacement for C in general numerical work, which is what I want to use Java for.

[ Amendment IV ]
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Want to read my stuff? Go ahead and crack it - no warrant necessary.

Get the rabbit installed on a machine behind your firewall
==> http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
Faster than freenet
==> http://www.i2p.net/
Encrypt Jabber
==> http://www.vanemery.com/Linux/Jabber/jabberd.html
Onion Routing
==> http://tor.eff.org/
Emerging Network To Reduce Orwellian Potency Yield
==> http://entropy.stop1984.com/
Free Internet telephony
==> http://skype.com/
GNU-ified P2p
==> http://www.gnu.org/software/gnunet/


DO NOT DENY yourself about 2 hours @ InfoAnarchy.org
OMG! ==> http://www.infoanarchy.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Pag e
LearnLearnLearnLearn ==> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptography

=================EMAIL ENCRYPTION===============
GPG (Free PGP)
==> http://gnupg.org/
Integrated with Thunderbird
==> http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
Mutt can't be beat as a mailreader and integrates GPG wonderfully.
==> http://mutt.blackfish.org.uk/
==> http://www.mutt.org/links.html
==> http://wiki.mutt.org/index.cgi?UserPages

!!! Please do not immediately send newly created keys to the keyservers (as many HOWTOs instruct new users to). They are already overflowing with "test keys" and other people's experiments from over the years THAT HAVE NO EXPIRATION and will never be deleted. These keys are "orphans" and most will never be used. As keyservers sync together, and most keys are never deleted once submitted - GET YOUR KEY SETUP CORRECTLY AND HAVE PRACTICE WITH IT BEFORE SENDING IT OFF TO THE KEYSERVERS!!! Otherwise storage requirements will continue to grow and using these in the future will become more difficult FOR ALL. Please, if you are just starting out with PGP or GPG or GnuPG or anything similar (the last two are in fact the same thing) use manual key distribution to begin (ascii armor your public key with

$ gpg --export --armor my@email.address.org

and copy and paste it into an email body or attach it to an email

$ gpg --export --armor my@email.address.org > myPubKey.txt

to gain practice with GPG before uploading your key. This way if you need to create another you won't have uploaded your mistakes. Many choices need to be made and it's worth getting things right before "going public" with your new digital ID. Experiment with yourself and a few different email accounts or with some friends first.)

SET AN EXPIRATION OF 2-5 YEARS OR SO AND MAKE SURE YOU HAVE YOUR PREFERENCES THE WAY YOU LIKE THEM BEFORE SENDING TO A KEYSERVER! Better yet is to HOST YOUR KEY ON YOUR WEBSITE (or try using http://biglumber.com/ instead to host your key and help c

Actually, you CAN be anonymous.
Take a look at www.i2p.net

Here's the solution: www.i2p.net
Anonymous net surfing, anonymous bittorrent - even running at pretty good speeds (unlike a certain other anonymous network *cough*freenet*cough*).

It's not really meant to be "ready for primetime" yet, but it works for me. Heck, someone's even got streaming music working over it. Definitely worth a look

Proxy services labeled as tax evasion tools, branded unconstitutional, and shutdown. Serverless proxies like Tor and I2P take off, become new targets from the government alongside of BitTorrent, Kazaa, etc.

Parent meant I2P.net

Coming up.

http://www.i2p.net/
I2P is an anonymous network, exposing a simple layer that applications can use to anonymously and securely send messages to each other. The network itself is strictly message based (ala IP), but there is a library available to allow reliable streaming communication on top of it (ala TCP). All communication is end to end encrypted (in total there are four layers of encryption used when sending a message), and even the end points ("destinations") are cryptographic identifiers (essentially a pair of public keys).

In fact, on I2P (not the website, the network) you can find a working implementation of BT over I2P.

http://www.i2p.net

And once you have i2p running, then you want to go to this i2p site:

http://duck.i2p/i2p-bt/

Indeed. But Freenet hasn't been useable for what, over a year now? I'm amazed they continue to get any donations at all, and I think Ian Clarke (Sanity) has long since lost interest. Sadly, Freenet seems to have collapsed under its own weight of extreme complexity.

Entropy was pretty good while it worked and still had a community, but I think concerns about the strength of its encryption kept it from being too popular (not to mention lack of advertising), and IIRC, ultimately the developer(s) lost interest.

At this point, AFAIK there really is no good "anonymity layer" pseudo-protocol (conceptually, a distributed, encrypted datastore w/ routing on each node) like Freenet or Entropy that works at all. i2p is supposed to be Entropy's successor, but I haven't messed w/ it yet.

If I were half as sharp as Clarke or developers of any other similar systems, I'd write my own, probably in C++ (for space and speed; Freenet runs in Java and last I checked chewed up tons of RAM and CPU time, whereas Entropy, written in C, didn't). I have some ideas for routing based on legal and geographic boundaries I'd like to implement...

It's on my to-do list someday. But ultimately, I'm nowhere near bright enough to think I could pull it off. *shrug*

Besides, the key legal argument Freenet and the like rest on is that of plausible deniability; that if you can't know for certain what is being trafficked, you can't be prosecuted for it. I think that's a weak argument though. I suspect a judge would take one look at Freenet or other such systems and say that finding "illegal stuff" (be it child porn in the U.S., anti-communist papers in China, photos of bare womens' faces in Iran, etc.) is easy enough to "reasonably" conclude there was knowledge of its traffic, and in fact, that was -- arguably -- the whole point of running Freenet in the first place. No judge is going to believe that such software is running so you can anonymously download photos of fluffy bunnies...

So I'm not convinced that even if the technology were solid, that the legal basis for it is built on much more than quicksand... It's far-better than nothing in terms of initial detection is concerned, sure, but also, IMO, far from perfect once that detection has occurred. But I can't conceive of a better tech+legal defense system either.

Ideally, I think we need a whole new *physical* layer Internet, separate from the existing Internet or Internet2 and devoid of participation by any and all governmental agents and anybody else who is significantly on the government payroll (defense contractors, etc.). Something like a wireless (or perhaps wired, where suitable), fully privately-owned mesh network on which only community-approved (based on the agreement of a certain number of surrounding and already-participating node-owners, much like with WASTE, except in meatspace) private nodes may communicate, over which all traffic is encrypted, possibly multiple times, possibly in hardware...

Oh well, I can dream of a freer world, can't I? :-)

Seems like everyday there is more and more reasons to start using I2P and or Freenet. Frankly I'm not worried, in part because I don't live in the USA :), because of these anonymous P2P applications. If these weren't around, I'd be freaking out more ;).

Once the DVD's hit the shelves in any country, the stuff will be on the net anyway.

Sharing it could become easier and safer also: I2P --- an anonymous onion-routing network --- now has a functional BitTorrent client that functions completely within I2P (tracker, peer-to-peer traffic, everything).

For those on I2P, get it here: http://duck.i2p/i2p-bt/files/i2p-bt-0.1.0.tgz (this URL only works when you're running I2P).

"Given that BT requires a link to a .torrent, how hard is it for companies to send a C&D to the ISP/owner of any site hosting illegal .torrent links? "

A few people are working on an anonymous BT tracker tool system for I2P.*ONLY* the BT tracker will be anonymous in this subtool that is being worked on as seen here on an update from 2 days ago. This would allow for publisher anonymity and should be fast since the tracker only coordinates the peers, with the peers doing the heavy lifting.

Of course having full anonymity (for the peers as well) would be useful , and maybe possible, but as your post suggsted - BT is vunerable at the tracker/publisher source. This is a solution to that vunerability, and in any event I2P is fully anonymous itself, if you want peer anonymity for a file :).

This BT tool is not ready yet for I2P, but I2P itself is making remarkable progress so I would not be surprised if it is ready within less than a few months. For more information you can also find the #I2P channel, with the #Freenet channel, on irc.freenode.net , I2P's chat network and IIP (I2P and the Metro IIP are linked).

"Given that BT requires a link to a .torrent, how hard is it for companies to send a C&D to the ISP/owner of any site hosting illegal .torrent links? "

A few people are working on an anonymous BT tracker tool system for I2P.*ONLY* the BT tracker will be anonymous in this subtool that is being worked on as seen here on an update from 2 days ago. This would allow for publisher anonymity and should be fast since the tracker only coordinates the peers, with the peers doing the heavy lifting.

Of course having full anonymity (for the peers as well) would be useful , and maybe possible, but as your post suggsted - BT is vunerable at the tracker/publisher source. This is a solution to that vunerability, and in any event I2P is fully anonymous itself, if you want peer anonymity for a file :).

This BT tool is not ready yet for I2P, but I2P itself is making remarkable progress so I would not be surprised if it is ready within less than a few months. For more information you can also find the #I2P channel, with the #Freenet channel, on irc.freenode.net , I2P's chat network and IIP (I2P and the Metro IIP are linked).

Get your copy here. It's an onion-routing network, and open mix-net if you like. It protects your anonimity by using a number of proxies to channel the data, and encrypting the data such that one always knows only the next hop to send it to.

In contrast to, e.g., Ants or MUTE, finding your data scales as log(N) (N: number of nodes in the net), whereas Ants and MUTE scale as N^2. And in contrast to Freenet and friends, this actually works.

Now, you can already just put all your music files in the eepsite/docroot folder of your install, and post your key on forum.i2p. That's enough for anonymous sharing.

Even better: A BitTorrent system that works completely within I2P is in the works ;)

A good, and working, anonymous P2P alternative to Freent is I2P. The creator of I2P has been around for a while and cross talks with Freenet developers on occasion as both the Freenet and I2P community channels are on the anonymous irc network IIP, and irc.freenode.net.

A lot of I2P is put into the public domain, with parts of it being GPL. Try www.i2p.net for more information.

Firstly, there are current 152 Indymedia websites, not 50 as reported. That means that the loss of ahimsa (the server that was taken down) caused 13% of the IMC (Indymedia Centre) sites to go down, not the "more than 40 percent" quoted.

Secondly, the article makes it sound as if there has been no progress on the cypherpunk front since 1996. While progress has been annoyingly slow, the growth of peer to peer technologies over the last few years has prompted a number of experiments - TOR, I2P, Freenet, etc. (see the I2P network comparisons page for a list), some of which seem to be getting pretty mature.

Thirdly, the bigger sites on ahimsa were up again in hours/days. They would have been up even quicker if a proper backup / mirror system had been in place, and in fact Indymedia techies have now been spurred into action by the ahimsa seizure to make sure the network is more robust. Think about this: the leftie scene is not particularly filled with technologically adept people. The Indymedia network runs on a shoestring budget (in terms of money / time). Despite this, the network was *still* able to respond and repair the damage fairly rapidly.

And finally, don't overestimate the competence of the FBI in this matter. Apparently when trying to do something about the picture of Swiss undercover cops on nantes.indymedia.org, one of the people they approached was from Seattle Indymedia, which has nothing to do with running either ahimsa or nantes.indymedia.org. And anyway, the disputed picture was quickly mirrored all over the place when it became "notorious" (just like the DeCSS code).

So, while I think Grossman's article is a good counterbalance to the mystical rants of people like John Perry Barlow, she leaves out a number of facts that show that the Internet can indeed be used to "route around censorship". Its all a matter of effort - in the 1970s and 80s, the ANC got around government censorship in South Africa by planting "pamphlet bombs" to scatter leaflets at busy rail stations (the cost: activists spending several years in jail). The Internet allows the subversion of censorship with far less effort, but of course it doesn't do it "by magic".

It is because of things like this that we need technology like I2P and Freenet more than ever. Freenet seems to be stuck in a morass and making no progress but I2P is useful now and would have prevented Indymedia's servers from being taken down.

I've tried ANTS two or three times in the last year, mildly impressed by the amount of bandwidth it consumed in a short time-frame.

There's another anonymous network that I have far more hope for, it's called I2P. The best way to describe it would be, 'the brother of freenet without the caching.' I've tried it a few times in the last two months and was extremely impressed with the progress they've been making. Setting up an 'eepsite' (website) was extremely easy and the installation was quick.

With freenet, authors would build a 'freesite' and insert it into the global freenet network. With I2P, the author runs a webserver, or irc server, or any number of other services and people access that content anonymously through the network. Very cool next-generation stuff.

The only hangup I have about I2P is the lack of a working I2P-DNS, which will probably be addressed in the future. Right now all host addresses are distributed through a hosts.txt, sort of like the early days of the internet before it grew too large.

I2P Home page.
I2P Faq.


R.T.L.

I've tried ANTS two or three times in the last year, mildly impressed by the amount of bandwidth it consumed in a short time-frame.

There's another anonymous network that I have far more hope for, it's called I2P. The best way to describe it would be, 'the brother of freenet without the caching.' I've tried it a few times in the last two months and was extremely impressed with the progress they've been making. Setting up an 'eepsite' (website) was extremely easy and the installation was quick.

With freenet, authors would build a 'freesite' and insert it into the global freenet network. With I2P, the author runs a webserver, or irc server, or any number of other services and people access that content anonymously through the network. Very cool next-generation stuff.

The only hangup I have about I2P is the lack of a working I2P-DNS, which will probably be addressed in the future. Right now all host addresses are distributed through a hosts.txt, sort of like the early days of the internet before it grew too large.

I2P Home page.
I2P Faq.


R.T.L.

I've tried ANTS two or three times in the last year, mildly impressed by the amount of bandwidth it consumed in a short time-frame.

There's another anonymous network that I have far more hope for, it's called I2P. The best way to describe it would be, 'the brother of freenet without the caching.' I've tried it a few times in the last two months and was extremely impressed with the progress they've been making. Setting up an 'eepsite' (website) was extremely easy and the installation was quick.

With freenet, authors would build a 'freesite' and insert it into the global freenet network. With I2P, the author runs a webserver, or irc server, or any number of other services and people access that content anonymously through the network. Very cool next-generation stuff.

The only hangup I have about I2P is the lack of a working I2P-DNS, which will probably be addressed in the future. Right now all host addresses are distributed through a hosts.txt, sort of like the early days of the internet before it grew too large.

I2P Home page.
I2P Faq.


R.T.L.

Freenet is kind of slow, look at the 2nd generation of anonymous P2P applications:

AntsP2P
I2P

Freenet is kind of slow, look at the 2nd generation of anonymous P2P
applications:

AntsP2P

I2P

It's usable right now, it's much more flexible than TOR but it's not exactly ready for primetime. Despite that you can still browse eepsites, use the anonymous irc and set up any time of transport tunnel you're looking for. Once it hits version .5 there will be more publicity made about it, wider testing, etc.

If you're on freenode.net chat, join #i2p or go to the website right here.

About I2P

It's usable right now, it's much more flexible than TOR but it's not exactly ready for primetime. Despite that you can still browse eepsites, use the anonymous irc and set up any time of transport tunnel you're looking for. Once it hits version .5 there will be more publicity made about it, wider testing, etc.

If you're on freenode.net chat, join #i2p or go to the website right here.

About I2P

It is a protocol? Do you need any special software?

I noticed it has its own source forge page, it is open specifications and open source software?

A P2P protocol would be a good thing, something similar is I2P is an anonymous P2P protocol.

Anonymous P2P will likely 'solve' these lawsuits, the technology is coming along nicely.

I think that I2P and Mute need some developers though if you are interested.

All this is doing is pushing people into using anonymous p2p applications. The four main ones are:

Freenet

Mute

I2P

GNUnet

Freenet is an encrypted P2P network where information is not stored at fixed locations: nodes exchange "keys" (information bits) all the time, and in this way "popular" information stays alive while non-used information gradually fades away.

Since every connection between a different pair of nodes is encrypted using different keys, it would be very hard to use traffic-analysis to find out what somebody is sending. To make matters even better: even you don't know what your node stores; it's all encrypted. This makes legal defense rather easy: it seems the only thing they can charge you with is participation in a P2P network or something alike.

Now, when using Freenet, you download the node-software (see my original post) and run it. This spawns the communication software, and a "virtual web proxy" at port 8888. This proxy interfaces you webbrowser to the Freenet. Browsing thus is a matter of directing your browser to your local host at port 8888.

As for searching: Now this is still a bit of a problem; since information is decentral, there also cannot be a Google-like central database that you can search. However, there are many "spider"-sites (remember the web in the beginning, especially Yahoo before they implemented a real search-database?) that you can use to find info. The most important ones for starting are The Freedom Engine (TFE) and Find Is Not Dolphin (FIND). Links to both are hardcoded into your local freenet proxy.

On the other hand, things are becoming better: The I2P project will be providing fully anonymous IP (IP over ann I2P interface!). Once that's done, you can run anything you like on I2P, even central search engines and the like.

Checkout http://www.i2p.net

and

http://invisiblenet.net/supportMain.php

I looked at both their websites, and I have to say the screenshots look suspiciously alike. Are the just versions of eachother marketed seperately? Do they operate on the same network?

Can anybody explain briefly how they work, on the protocol level? They all claim "absolute anonymity" which we all know does not exist, so it's just a marketing term. How do these commercial offerings compare to free projects such as Mute and I2P? (Freenet is not comparable since it's not really a filesharing application)

i2p is working on being "decentralized internet", with a distributed naming system, but right now, it uses good old "hosts.txt", based on the YAGNI principle. Still, a project worth paying some attention to, they seem to have gotten some interesting things done already, and they have a sense of direction.